Suite en Hommage à Malevich, 2015

Private Collection, Montreal 

In Hommage à Malevich, Claude Tousignant directly engages with the legacy of Kazimir Malevich and the radical reduction of painting proposed by Suprematism. Emerging in Russia in the 1910s, Suprematism rejected representational subject matter in favour of pure geometric forms, most famously the square, as a means of expressing a sense of spiritual or transcendent reality beyond the visible world. Malevich’s Black Square, 1915 became its defining image—an assertion of painting at its most essential and absolute.

Tousignant, known for his exploration of geometric abstraction and perceptual experience, built his career around the effects of colour, form, and optical vibration to activate the viewer’s perception rather than depict external reality. In Hommage à Malevich, he returns to the iconic black square exactly one hundred years later, but subtly reanimates it by introducing a small blue square in relief at the centre of the composition. This intervention adds both colour and physical depth, shifting the work away from Malevich’s "at surface toward a more dynamic engagement with space and perception. In doing so, Tousignant both acknowledges the foundational role of Suprematism and reinterprets it through his own lifelong investigation of how colour and form operate as lived visual experience.